Lyta Alexander
Lyta Alexander was a Human telepath, assigned by the Psi Corps to Babylon 5 to serve as the station's licensed commercial telepath. She was later physically altered by the Vorlons. History Early life Lyta Alexander was born on December 10, 2225 at the Syria Planum colony. A sixth generation telepath, Alexander's talent manifested early and she was taken in by the Psi Corps and raised in Cadre Prime on Earth when she was only a few years old. This is in contrast to her mother, who was a P2 with abilities that did not manifest early enough for her to be a member of Cadre Prime and was never formally attached to the Corps due to her own mother Natasha's connections.Deadly Relations - Bester Ascendant Alexander, like her grandmother, was a P5. Though she had little contact with her blood family, she saw enough of her mother to remember her stories of her grandmother working for the old Director Vacit, even showing her an old picture of him. Even while in Teeptown, Alexander's grandmother would often bring her presents. Though they always came through the Grins, Alexander always knew it was her grandma who sent them. From Beta Colony to Pak'ma While training at the Academy she met and became friends with Talia Winters, though the two would later go their separate ways when Winters went on to train as a commercial telepath while Alexander opted to join MetaPol's intern program."Babylon 5 Personnel Files 4.0" (Season 4 DVD, Disc 6)Divided Loyalties Acting as a profiler for the Psi Cops, Alexander was on the Beta Colony in the Sheffer System when a local mundane serial killer begun targeting telepaths exclusively. Eventually the Psi Cop Alfred Bester was called in from Mars colony to investigate and Alexander was assigned as his field assistant. Though the local police did not seem overly interested in catching the perp, Bester and Alexander used unauthorized and unwarranted scans to track him down and eventually capture him. Rather than arrest him and expose their own activities, the killer's mind was implanted with horrific visions that drove him to the point where he would spend the rest of his life confined to a mental institute screaming at the things they put in his head and be forcefully restrained to prevent him from clawing his own eyes out. The experience was the first time her absolute loyalty to the Corps was shaken. Soon after, Alexander transferred out of the Psi Cop program and went into commercial work instead.The Face of the Enemy Between 2247 and 2257, she worked as the commercial telepath for Xenocorp, which involved monitoring corporate negotiations with alien representatives, including Narn, Centauri and pak'ma'ra.Moments of Transition Babylon 5 On January 3rd 2257, Alexander was assigned to Babylon 5 as the station's first commercial telepath. She began mediating business deals and also received an odd proposition from Ambassador G'Kar for a deal to sell her DNA, since the Narn did not have telepaths. The day after she arrived, there was an assassination attempt on the Vorlon Ambassador Kosh. To discover the person who had done this, Laurel Takashima and Benjamin Kyle asked her to conduct an unauthorized scan on Kosh. Alexander initially dismissed this, but, seeing the consequences, agreed and was eventually able to view Kosh's last few moments. Surprisingly, she saw Commander Jeffrey Sinclair as the attempted assassin, however, the real culprit was a Minbari assassin using a changeling net. She encountered the assassin leaving Medlab, appearing as Alexander herself.The Gathering A week later, she was recalled to Earth as the Psi Corps wanted to question her about what she experienced while inside Kosh's mind.The War Prayer In a coincidence, her old friend Talia Winters was later assigned to serve the position she had vacated on Babylon 5.Divided Loyalties Underground After months of being interrogated about her experience with Kosh, she escaped Psi Corps custody and began working with the Martian resistance. While in hiding with the resistance, Alexander learned of the Psi Corps sleeper program. Finding out that one of these sleepers was on Babylon 5, she discovered the password required to unlock this hidden personality and traveled to Babylon 5. Unsure of who it could be, Alexander scanned the minds of all the command staff but was unable to find the sleeper among them. By chance, Winters walked into the room and Alexander scanned her mind, unlocking the hidden personality. The second personality then took complete control, effectively destroying the "real" Winters.Divided Loyalties Vorlon aide Alexander then traveled to the edge of Vorlon space in an attempt to make it to the Vorlon homeworld. She paid a ship captain to bring her to the edge of Vorlon space and send a signal, but after waiting for an extended period of time without a response, the captain decided to leave. Determined not to give up, she paid the captain the last of her credits for a lifepod where she would continue to wait, sending a telepathic signal into Vorlon space in hopes of a response. After drifting in space for five days, nearly out of supplies and oxygen, she was picked up by the Vorlons and taken to their homeworld. While there she was modified physically and mentally, her regular telepathic abilities enhanced dramatically. She was given gill implants which allowed her to breathe in an alien atmosphere. In 2260 she returned to Babylon 5 and served as an aide to Ambassador Kosh. The Vorlons provided Alexander with protection from the Psi Corps, along with paid living quarters on the station and a salary for her services. Part of her duties included "carrying" part or all of Kosh's essence around inside her. Alexander also aided the crew in ways a normal Psi Corps member couldn't. She forcefully scanned a Centauri telepath who aided a man who kidnapped and tortured Edward in order to find out where he had taken Edward. Alexander was also approached by Mollari who tried to blackmail her into giving him details of Vorlon territory. She threatened to give him nightmares if he didn't back off.Passing Through Gethsemane Alexander was off the station on an assignment from Kosh when he was murdered by the Shadows. She was not carrying a part of him at the time, but was hopeful someone else might have a piece, though her initial search is fruitless. This does not sit well with Kosh's successor, Ulkesh, whom she subsequently assists. Once Captain Sheridan and his crew learned that telepaths could be used to disrupt and slow the Shadow vessels, Alexander was asked to help them prove it. She accompanied Sheridan aboard the White Star and they located a lone Shadow Vessel. At first, the experience was too much for her, but when Sheridan touches her she has a vision of Kosh's death. Enraged over the brutality of Kosh's death, Alexander is able to affect the Shadow ship, keeping it immobile long enough for the White Star to destroy it. After the battle, she begins to suspect Sheridan himself may have part of Kosh within him.Walkabout That theory cannot be properly tested, however, when Sheridan departs for Z'ha'dum and seemingly dies on the planet.Z'ha'dum Afterwards, Ulkesh becomes more secretive. He refuses to come to the council meetings and all but ignores any request by Delenn. She asks him to help her assemble a fleet and go to Z'ha'dum, but Ulkesh flatly refuses. After carrying Ulkesh for a brief time, he gives her leave for a brief while. She goes to Susan Ivanova with a desperate plan to go to Z'ha'dum and try to locate Sheridan. She explains she believes Sheridan was sufficiently touched by Kosh to allow her to find him, and that she has the strength to delay the Shadows long enough. Ivanova and Delenn bring her aboard the White Star and they head for the Shadow's homeworld. Once in orbit, Alexander is nearly overwhelmed, but is able to stall them just long enough for a few scans. They find no trace of Sheridan, however, and head back to the station.The Hour of the Wolf Ulkesh treated Alexander even more harshly: among other things, he made her get rid of everything in her quarters save her mattress as a means to limit apparent distractions. Delenn, suspecting as Alexander does that the Vorlons are now hiding something from them, asks her to try and find out what it is. Alexander is afraid to oblige, saying that while Kosh personally might have cared about the younger races, she is starting to believe the rest of the Vorlons do not. After carrying Ulkesh again, she confronts him with his secrets, but he refuses to answer. Angry, she demands respect from the Vorlon, but he only mocks her. In desperation, she attempts to scan his mind. Ulkesh violently knocks her to the ground, overwhelming her with a flood of painful images of the Vorlons' intentions—they plan to wipe out everyone who has been touched by the Shadows, including entire planets. Ivanova finds Alexander, terrified and in shock, alone in her quarters later, and manages to help her pull herself together. Ivanova lets everyone know (including Sheridan, seemingly back from the dead) that she has evidence of her own confirming Alexander's story.The Summoning She helped drive him from the station with the help of the remaining fragments of Kosh.Falling Toward Apotheosis Telepath crisis She soon found herself without any direction when the Vorlons departed beyond the Rim, although she was involved in the Thirdspace incident where hidden elements of her Vorlon transformation took over and helped defeat the aliens from Thirdspace. With the Vorlons gone, Alexander lost the financial support they provided as well as their protection from the Psi Corps. Since her savings would not last forever, she set out trying to find work, but because she was a rogue telepath no one would hire her. Michael Garibaldi saw the problems she was having and tried to hire her to help him in his work for Edgars Industries, but the company's head vetoed this plan. After this, she did not have the means to continue on her own, so she reluctantly had to turn to Alfred Bester. In order to ensure her cooperation with this agreement, Bester expertly manipulated Alexander by playing on her need for an income, and on her feelings of being used and thus discarded by the senior officers. In exchange for her removal from the rogue list and adding her name to a list of Psi Corps covert operatives, she would agree to a written power of attorney to hand over her bodily remains to the Corps upon her death, so that they could better understand what the Vorlons had done to her. She begrudgingly took the deal, and once again became the station's resident commercial telepath. After rejoining the Psi Corps, Alexander became more self centered, using her abilities only when she was paid for it. In one instance, she made it clear to Zack Allan that an additional "stress fee" of ten percent would be required when scanning an assault victim if she had to relive the attack while inside the victim's mind. She played a major role in the final battle of the Earth Alliance Civil War, sending out a signal to the Shadow-enhanced telepaths smuggled aboard the ships loyal to Clark by the Martian resistance to interfere with their operation during the Battle of Mars. During this mission, she also helped Garibaldi prove his innocence in that he had been an unwitting pawn in turning Sheridan over to the Earth authorities.Endgame In early 2262, Alexander became romantically involved with Byron Gordon, the leader of a colony of rogue telepaths offered sanctuary aboard Babylon 5. During an evening of physical intimacy, she dropped her mental barriers and projected her memories to the colony residents, revealing that the Vorlons had created human telepaths to be used as tools in the war against the Shadows.Secrets of the Soul Shocked and enraged by what he had seen in Alexander's mind, Byron and his followers proceeded to illegally scan the alien ambassadors aboard B5 to discover their secrets. Byron later confronted the ISA Council with what his people had done, demanding a homeworld for his people in exchange for keeping the secrets his people had found.In the Kingdom of the Blind Matters quickly went from bad to worse and escalated, with both Captain Lochley and President Sheridan refusing to accede to Byron's demands.A Tragedy of Telepaths Soon Bester and a Psi Corps bloodhound unit were called in to deal with the situation, with hostages taken by a small group of violent renegades. The hostage situation ended and Byron was taken into custody before he could reason with his people, but rather than be taken in by the Psi Cops, Byron and some of his people committed suicide by igniting a chemical spill with a PPG, causing an explosion. After losing her lover, she was inspired by him to continue his fight for telepath rights.Phoenix Rising Using the names and contacts given to her by Byron, Alexander helped as many blips escape the Corps as possible and set about realizing Byron's dream of a homeworld for telepaths, becoming the de facto leader of the telepath underground. Realizing that the movement would need funding, she began contracting with organizations to use the underground's telepaths for commerial work. She also negotiated with Ambassador G'Kar to sell the Narn Regime human telepath DNA, an offer he had originally made to her some five years previous when she had first arrived on B5. She also decided to start exploring what the Vorlons had done to her, and tried out something on Garibaldi briefly.Darkness Ascending Between using these resources to find a suitable world and build a force that could take on Psi Corps and free human telepaths from their bondage, Alexander continued to work on B5 as a commercial telepath, though she charged abnormally high fees for her services. On one such job for Vir Cotto, which saw her going to Zhabar with Dr. Franklin on behalf of the Centauri Republic during the Centauri War, she encountered a piece of Shadow tech, a control device that her Vorlon programming recognized. She and Franklin were able to secure one before fleeing for their lives and bringing it back to Babylon 5.Movements of Fire and Shadow Her activities eventually drew the attention of Earth Alliance Security. The authorities had traced the money used to finance a dozen or so attacks on Psi Corps right back to B5. During her arrest she demonstrated some of the true power she'd been hiding up until that point, taking control of the minds of everyone in the Zocalo. It wasn't until ISA President Sheridan, who, because of being touched by the Vorlons, was resistant to telepathic assault, interceded with a PPG to her head that she finally acceded and was taken into custody. Michael Garibaldi later visited her in jail to offer her a deal. He agreed to help her build a functioning resistance organization to aid in her fight against the Psi Corps. In exchange, she agreed to return in two years time to remove the telepathic block placed in his mind by Bester. During the negotiations with Garibaldi, she revealed that her altered telepathic abilities far outstretched anything ever seen in a human telepath and that she was intended as a Vorlon "doomsday weapon".Wheel of Fire Exploring The Unknown She left Babylon 5 with G'Kar Thursday September 3rd 2262 to explore the galaxy. Six weeks into their travels, the pair found themselves on Durk 3, a tiny commercial space station near the Earth Omega Colony. While there, Alexander had heard rumors about a colony world in Sector 843, settled long ago by telepaths from various worlds and the two departed aboard the Na'Toth for the eight day journey to Sector 843. While en route, they came across an abandoned Psi Corps mothership, drifting in hyperspace. After boarding the ship they managed to backtrack its course to an uncharted planet and decide to investigate. After arriving G'Kar and Alexander became separated, though it doesn't take either of them long to discover something in amiss. The planet, as it turned out, was essentially alive—every plant, insect and animal telepathically linked in a "telesymbiosis" with a Hive Mind Bacteria. It comprised a powerful telepathic life-form that, while not sentient on its own, facilitated enough neural connections for the entire ecosystem to reach a kind of critical mass and achieve a collective consciousness. After the collective consciousness tried to kill them both, Alexander managed to kill the hive mind in a devastating telepathic assault, ensuring that no others would become trapped on the planet.Genius Loci The Telepath War By the end of 2264, Alexander returned to find that Garibaldi was as good as his word in creating a force to use against the Psi Corps. In 2265, during the midst of the Telepath War, Alexander and the Resistance discovered that Psi Cops had recently been able to crack some of Director Vacit's time-locked files on Ganymede, tracing his course into Vorlon space. Quickly summoning Garibaldi, Alexander convinced him to sponsor a mission to intercept if not beat Psi Corps to it, believing they intended to uncover the Vorlon secret to enhancing telepathic abilities. In return, Alexander would finally free Garibaldi of his "Asimov" telepathic block. They arrived to find a dead world, littered with the bones of the Vorlons' test subjects which had been evidently obliterated some time ago. To their surprise, they also discovered Director Vacit, alive and well despite his advanced years (though most of them negated by his extended near-light speed journey). The meeting was cut short when Mr. Diamond, a Psi Cop appeared. Following a brief confrontation, Diamond killed Vacit before being gunned down himself. Believing that there was nothing left on the world that either the Corps or the resistance could use, Alexander and Garibaldi departed. Unknown to either of them, the entire incident was a telepathic projection facilitated by the docile yet immensely powerful "Nephilim", under Vacit's direction. Not only were both Vacit and thousands of the Nephilim still alive, Diamond and his Psi Cops were now slaves to the Director's will.The Nautilus Coil Alexander was eventually killed during an attack on a Psi Corps facility housing Carolyn Sanderson, the cryogenically frozen lover of Psi Cop Alfred Bester in the last days of the Telepath War. Although she never got to see it, the Earth Alliance officially dissolved Psi Corps and took steps to try to re-integrate telepaths into Human society.The Well of ForeverThe Legend of the Rangers Family Tree Unnamed Female--+--''Unnamed Male'' | | Desa Alexander----+----Jack O'Hannlon | |_________ | | | (adopted) | Kevin Vacit | (See: Alfred Bester's Family Tree.) | Brenna Alexander--+--''Unnamed Male'' | | Michelle Alexander--+--''Unnamed Male'' | | Natasha Alexander--+--''Unnamed Male'' | | Alexander's Mother--+--''Unnamed Male'' | | Lyta Alexander Notes * The exact circumstances of Alexander's death during the Telepath War are shown in Final Reckoning - The Fate of Bester, and an oblique mention in The Legend of the Rangers by G'Kar that she is "gone now." In addition, JMS has confirmed she did not survive the conflict.JMS post on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated - 4/3/2001 8:16:00 AM * Originally, Alexander was to have featured in Lieutenant John Matheson's flashback sequence in "The Path of Sorrows". However, Patricia Tallman was unavailable to reprise her role due to a prior commitment, and so the character Alison was created to take her place.JMS post on CIS - 7/2/1999 3:39:00 PM * Of the four characters that leave the show after "The Gathering" (the other three being Laurel Takashima, Benjamin Kyle, and Carolyn Sykes), Alexander was the only one to return later in the series. Appearances References }} Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta Alexander, Lyta